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Adnan Khashoggi (or Kashoggi) (Arabic:عدنان خاشقجي, Turkish: Adnan Kaşıkçı) (born 25 July 1935 in Mecca) is a billionaire Saudi arms-dealer and businessman. He is also noted for his engagements with high society in both the Occidental and Arabic-speaking worlds, and for his involvement in the Iran-Contra, BCCI and numerous other affairs.

Contents 1 History 2 Personal life 2.1 Divorce from Soraya 3 Trivia 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

Khashoggi is the son of Muhammad Khashoggi, a medical doctor who was Turkish by descent; the family name means spoonmaker in that language. His sister Samira Khashoggi Fayed was the mother of Dodi Fayed, who died with Princess Diana.

Khashoggi was educated at Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt, California State University, Chico, Ohio State University, and Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA. It is said that Khashoggi quit his studies in order to seek his fortune in business.

Khashoggi headed a company called Triad Holding Company, which among other things built the Triad Centre in Salt Lake City, Utah, which later went bankrupt. He was famed as an arms dealer, brokering deals between US firms and the Saudi Government, most actively in the 1960s and 1970s. In the documentary The Mayfair Set, Saudi author Said Aburish states that one of Adnan's first weapons deal was providing David Stirling with weapons for a covert mission in Yemen during the Aden Emergency in 1963. Among his overseas clients were defense contractors Lockheed Corporation (now Lockheed Martin Corporation), Raytheon, Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation and Northrop Corporation (which have now merged into Northrop Grumman). A shrewd businessman, he covered his financial tracks by establishing front companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein to handle his commissions as well as developing contacts with notables such as CIA officers James H. Critchfield and Kim Roosevelt and US businessman Bebe Rebozo, a close associate of former US President Richard Nixon. He was also involved in diamond mining in the Central African Empire, working closely with the dictator Bokassa.

He was implicated in the Iran-Contra Affair as a key middleman in the arms-for-hostages exchange along with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and, in a complex series of events, was found to have borrowed money for these arms purchases from the now-bankrupt financial institution the Bank of Credit and Commerce International with Saudi and US backing. In 1988, Khashoggi was arrested in Switzerland, accused of concealing funds, and held for three months and then extradited to the United States where he was released on bail and subsequently acquitted. In 1990, a United States federal jury in Manhattan acquitted Khashoggi and Imelda Marcos, widow of the exiled Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, of racketeering and fraud.^[1] Since then he has kept a low profile, last resurfacing in 1992 to mediate for Col. Ghaddafi of Libya.

American University used to have a prominent building named the Khashoggi Center but after he defaulted on his donation pledge, the school removed his name from the building.

Khashoggi continues to live a quiet life in the Principality of Monaco, even though a warrant for his arrest was issued by an English court in the amount of £7 million. His services as a facilitator have been a recurring feature throughout US administrations since Nixon; most recently, he met with Richard Perle shortly before the American invasion of Iraq, in 2003.

Khashoggi was well known for leading an extravagant and wild lifestyle that was legendary in its time. This was commemorated on rock band Queen's album The Miracle, on which the second song is titled "Khashoggi's Ship". The song mentions his super yacht "Nabila" built by Benetti and appearing in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again. The yacht was later acquired by Donald Trump who renamed it "Trump Princess" for Ivana Trump. After Donald Trump's divorce, the yacht was repossessed and then sold by an American Express subsidiary bank to another Saudi Businessman, Al-Waleed bin Talal, a nephew of the king of Saudi Arabia. It is now kept at berth number one in Antibes with an occasional cruise to Cannes, in the south of France under the new name of "Kingdom 5KR".

In addition to the yacht, he also had an opulent Jumbo jet with futuristic custom interior built around 1980. It is featured in the last issue of Nest Magazine.

At his 50th birthday party, held in Marbella, Spain in 1985, said to have cost millions of dollars, he entertained celebrity guests such as Sean Connery, Shirley Bassey, porn star Olinka Hardiman, Brooke Shields, Michael Caine, and George Hamilton IV.

Adnan's son, Khalid Khashoggi, was rumored to have problems with drinking and drug addiction. He is now living in New York or New Jersey.

In divorcing his wife, Soraya, in 1980, Khashoggi agreed to one of the largest divorce settlements on record; one figure was quoted at £548.4m,^[2] but reports vary wildly and part of the value of the settlement was said to have been tied to oil prices.

It later emerged that one of his daughters (Petrina Khashoggi) with ex-wife Soraya turned out, on DNA testing at age 18, to be the daughter of UK Tory Cabinet Minister Jonathan Aitken, soon to be disgraced for his role in accepting a gift from another arms dealer, Mohammed Said Ayas, a Lebanese and a close associate of Prince Muhammad bin Fahd of Saudi Arabia. In his libel suit against the Guardian newspaper, Aitken perjured himself over this gift of accommodation at the Paris Ritz and went to jail.

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• Army of Lovers band featured Khashoggi in its song La Plage De Saint Tropez with the following line: "We met Khashoggi with a gun"
• Harold Robbins´novel The Pirate (1974) is supposed to be inspired by the life and lifestyle of Khashoggi
• The rock band Queen refers to Khashoggi in a track called "Khashoggi's Ship" on its 1989 album The Miracle.
• As well, Khashoggi is the name of one of the antagonist characters in the musical based on Queen's works, We Will Rock You.

• Ghaith Pharaon
• Ahmed Zaki Yamani
• Ramy El-Batrawi
• Larry J. Kolb, who tells of his experience as an assisitant to Khashoggi in his book Overworld: The Life and Times of a Reluctant Spy (New York: Riverhead Books, 2004)

1. ^ Marcos Juror Among Stewart Jury Finalists (Jan. 25, 2004). Retrieved on September 11, 2007.
2. ^ http://www.virgin.net/money/features/mostexpensivedivorces/gal_01_03.html

• Ramy El-Batrawi
• Rajiv Gandhi Murder Controversy
• TIME Magazine Cover: Adnan Khashoggi Jan. 19, 1987
• Notes on The Richest Man In The World by Ronald Kessler ISBN 0-446-51339-3
• Profile at NNDB
• Death of a Princess
• Chapter Servants of the Crown from Saïd K. Aburish's The House of Saud ISBN 0-7475-7874-5
• Did Adnan Khashoggi Throw the Election to Dubya?
• More "Six Degrees of Adnan Khashoggi"
• TSX member Deutsche Bank in major penny stock scandal article by Brent Mudry
• Banking units embroiled in lawsuit copy of a Globe and Mail article by Karen Howlett
• Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi? The New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh, March 2003.
• Adnan Khashoggi, Rakesh Saxena and the Spiderweb